Setting your nutrition cruise control

Today's episode is called setting your nutrition cruise control. I chose this topic because cruise control very much aligns with the roadmap prospects of the way that I did in The Wellness Roadmap. And that process is all about helping you get healthy and get fit and, and be happy with the lifestyle that you've set for yourself. And the easiest way to do that is when you can make things automatic, like setting your cruise control. So as you might guess, setting a cruise control is very much like building habits. And so we currently have our eating habits. And if you're like most people, you probably have about maybe a dozen different foods that you eat on almost a regular basis. So we have our regular foods, we have our regular treats, we have the things that we do, and we're all fairly consistent at that.

At least most people are. If you're, if you're eating a wider variety than that, then that's probably good for you. But in a general sense, most of us have those GoTo foods that we have on a day, in, day out basis. And a lot of times those are based on convenience. And so in setting the cruise control, we're going to do a few things to kind of break that down. And this is effectively what I'll call a three-tier plan. So there's a, there's three things that you're going to do here, that are going to basically set you up to have your cruise control set. Okay? The first is that I want you to start logging your food. And I know that's cumbersome, but to take that weight and measure the food, measure the cups, measure, do all that measuring and then logging all that.

I know that takes a lot of time. It's very difficult at times. But taking the time to do that over a week or two is going to give you a good idea of what your core foods are, how much you're eating. It's going to give you a lot of data on the macros that you're getting on the calories that you're eating. And, and in some cases the micro nutrients that you're getting or not getting. Okay? So based on that information, you now know who, what your core foods are and you can choose that and stick to a lot of the core foods that you know are good for you. And then move away from some of those foods that are not so good for you. So that's kind of stage one is to take some time. You don't have to make any drastic changes to your eating, you just start logging it.

And that does include measuring the food. So you're going to have to measure if you know, volume or weight. It does include writing it all down or putting it into an app like My Fitness Pal. So now you have the data, what's your core eating has like over the course of those two weeks. Okay. The next thing you're going to want to do is, is come up with a plan. So this is stage two of this. We set a plan and in that plan the best way and what I found the most effective way of getting things that you need done and making sure that you're ready to move forward, with your eating in, in a cruise control fashion is to make it as convenient as possible by doing bulk cooking. And so what I will typically do when I want to do the batch cooking or the bulk cooking is I will cook like three meals, three or four meals on a Sunday, and I'll cook enough that I have basically, I would say four meals of each of those four meals.

So that's, that's 16 meals that are basically preparing at one time. And so I'm using the slow cooker. You might want to use an Instapot, you know, that can help you get things done a lot quicker. I use the grill sometimes and I'm making a sauce or doing some things on the stovetop. And so it's, it's a, it's a pretty active day. It's pretty busy. But you get a lot of food cooked, put it in containers, and then I put the bulk of those in my freezer. I'll put like the next three days worth of food in my refrigerator. Um, and I'm good to go. Um, at that point now I have my entire week pretty much planned out and if every Sunday I prepare different types of foods over time and going to have a pretty good variety of different types of foods ready to go, frozen.

And boom, there you go. It's very convenient and it really saves you a lot of time because you're doing all that cooking at one time, all at the same time. So it really is effective. And time-effective if you're crunched for time. And one of the other advantages I've found of bulk cooking is I don't have to go to the grocery store as often because I used to have to go to the grocery store about every third day just to make sure I had fresh produce in house. But now when I'm doing like a make it a marinara and I'm used, I saw her that I've got several containers of marinara sauce, I've made a bone broth and I've got several containers of that. Um, I've taken the other vegetables that I would put into a dish and I make that dish and then I freeze the dish.

So I don't have to worry about going out and getting fresh vegetables all the time because most of my meals are already prepared. So I might go to the grocery store once a week now and that's when I do my bulk buying. I also buy some produce and I'm good to go. Okay. So bulk cooking is, is kind of the second stage of this. It's very, very important because doing that really does allow you to be on cruise control. It's, it's what's convenient. It's what's there.

Okay. And then the third stage of this is where you now go into your pantry in your freezer and refrigerator, and you start looking for those foods that are not helping you reach your goal. If your goal is weight loss and you've got a tub of ice cream in your freezer, you know that type of ice cream is not going to help you.

Now, you may still want to enjoy it and you looked at your, your logging and you say, okay, well that's only adding X number of calories, X grams of fat, X grams of sugar, and you're okay with that, then cool. That works into your plan. But if you're the kind of person like me who might go in there and eat the whole tub at one sitting, that's not gonna fit your plant. So going in and taking the time to understand those foods that weren't serving you and getting them out of your house now is a good time to do this. So you've done the book shopping, you've got some good foods for you. You're not be worried about being hungry, toss out those other foods, donate them to a shelter, something you know, just you don't need them in your house. So taking the time to clear out your pantry.

And then when you do your shopping, just stick to your list and, and stay on plants. So from the cruise control perspective, we log, so we know what our existence is, our speed, our current speed, we know what we're doing. Then we go through and we make a plan and we start batch cooking. So we're putting those foods into circulation that we want to eat. And then we're taking the third stage and we're getting rid of the foods that we no longer want to eat. So the bag of chips, the popcorn, M&Ms, whatever you have in your pantry, that you know is your go to for stress or something that's going to take you off of plan, you need to get rid of that stuff. So if you'll take those three stages, you've set a really good cruise control.

And now the final bit of this that I want to get into because you have to also think about those times when a traffic gets thicker or there's construction or there's a detour, you're obviously not going to be able to leave your cruise control on and just flow through it. It just doesn't work like that. So when there's time that, you know, maybe family is planning a dinner out or it's the holidays are coming up and you're going to be going to a family meal, um, or potluck, if we're here for her, we're to do those again. Um, you know, thing things are going to come up that you know are going to break your, your plan, they're going to get you off of your cruise control and that's okay. But you want to start setting rules for yourself and you want to start thinking through each of those types of detours before it's time to go.

So if we're talking about a dinner out, doing a little bit of research on their menu, knowing that, okay, if I, if I go this route, um, that I would normally have gone, then this is what that's gonna mean. And if I look at their menu online and see I could eat this other thing, like maybe instead of eating the, um, the casserole dish with all the cheese than the fat and the sugar, all this stuff that I would normally eat in a meal, I opt to go for the chicken and a salad and maybe some broccoli or I say, okay, I'm going to go and I'm into the fish. That's a baked fish. Yeah, there'll be a little bit of rice, but that's Ocala half of it and let the rest go. So you can kind of have these plans to go into a, the situation you turn off the cruise control, you go into the situation and then the next day you turn that cruise control back on.

And because you've done the bulk cooking because you made it convenient, it's easy for you to switch right back into things because it's right there for you. Um, you're not falling off, you're taking a detour and usually for a good reason, do it and then be ready to come right back on plan. And that's where, again, the bulk cooking and having that stuff ready, making things convenient, having the other stuff that you shouldn't be eating out of mind, out of pantry is going to set you up to do a lot better.

So, if you have any questions about how to set your nutrition cruise control, please send me an email, allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com. I'd love to go over that with you can talk about other strategies to help you get on track. If you have any questions, just send me an email, allan@40plusfitnesspodcast.com. Thank you.

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